Down Cellar Beats

This is a preview of a track that was produced for an online music production lesson that a friend of mine and I put together some time ago now that we’ve named Down Cellar Music. The focus of this project is to offer ideas and techniques to musicians to help them take their musical inventions and craft them into fully realized productions as well as to help people transition from playing their instrument in a solo context to collaborating with other musicians.

This track is part of a series of lessons based around the idea of producing music with minimal gear. The entire track was built and performed on a Bastl Instruments microGranny sampler. That’s it. All the sounds you hear (double bass, drums, Rhodes, singing drum, and some other random sounds) got recorded as samples directly into this little box and then we took turns improvising with the onboard triggers and effects. The last step was to edit and trim the recording of these layers of performance into a final arrangement.

This track is one of my favorite pieces that we’ve produced for this project. Stay tuned for a more detailed look into how this track came to be and lessons to help you make the most out of whatever gear you happen to have, no matter how modest a setup it may be.